State of Health Sector

4 OTs at GMC not functioning due to dearth of manpower


Tahir Mushtaq

JAMMU, Dec 11: While crores have been spent on up gradation of infrastructure in the hospitals across Jammu and Kashmir in past eight years, but lack of trained manpower has rendered these newly created facilities useless.


One such example is the unutilized four Operation Theatres (OT) in the new emergency block of the Government Medical College (GMC) Jammu which have remained non functional even after eight months of inauguration.


Sources said that provision for these OTs were made to enable doctors to attend the emergency cases in minimum possible time, particularly road accident victims and to ease pressure on the existing operation facilities but these have so far not been used due to shortage of manpower.


Sources said that these new operation theatres are even without the required equipments, putting a question mark on the huge investments made on the building of the new emergency block in the premier hospital of Jammu region.


“Last year in April Cabinet gave approval to 2000 posts of doctors and para-medical staff, but so far no step has been taken to speed up the process of recruitment. It’s not case with GMC only but in most of the hospitals across the state the newly created infrastructure is gathering dust”, said an official.


Officials said that GMC administration has been repeatedly raising the issue with the concerned minister and stressing the need to make these OTs functional to deal with the emergency cases and ease huge pressure on the existing facilities. But the government is asking the hospital management to wait for the Public Service Commission (PSC) to complete the recruitment process.


When contacted principal GMC, Dr Rajinder Singh expressed his helplessness and said that they are looking towards the PSC. “We cannot do anything till we have specialist doctors. We are creating infrastructure and when we get manpower, these OTs will be made functional”, Singh said.


A senior official in the health department said that main reason for the delay in recruiting doctors is the financial implications involved for which the state government was looking towards the union health ministry for help.